TSA Administrator John Pistole testified before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee today on the agency's controversial SPOT behavior detection program, which was the subject of a critical report by the Government Accountability Office earlier this week. Mark Wilson/Getty Images

The head of the Transportation Security Administration today assured Congress steps have been taken to prevent the kind of racial profiling that occurred at Newark Liberty International Airport under a controversial TSA behavior detection program.

TSA Administrator John Pistole was appearing before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation in Washington, which examined the effectiveness of the TSA’s Screening of Passengers by Observation Technique, or SPOT, program.

The hearing followed the release of a Government Accountability Office report this week questioning the effectiveness of the SPOT program, noting that the stress and fatigue of air travel could be mistaken for the nervousness of a terrorist. The GAO is the investigative arm of Congress.

Under questioning by Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-10th Dist.), Pistole assured lawmakers the TSA had emphasized to behavior detection officers, or BDOs, that the purpose of the SPOT program was not to rack up a large number of law enforcement referrals. An internal TSA report from 2010 found that the pursuit of referrals in the belief they would please superiors had led some TSA managers and screeners at Newark Liberty to target Hispanic fliers for document checks in 2008 and 2009.

“I think there was a perception among some BDOs,” Pistole told the committee, “that BDOs may be promoted more readily if they made a higher number of referrals. That is not the case, so we have gone back to retrain and clarify because we don’t want BDOs referring because they think they’ll be more readily promoted.”

The ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), cited this week's GAO report in calling for an end to the SPOT program, which has cost taxpayers close to $1 billion since it began in 2007.

Payne, who is African-American, told Pistole that he was particularly sensitive to racial profiling in New Jersey, after a judge found that the State Police engaged in the practice in the 1990s in order to boost drug arrests on the New Jersey Turnpike.

“And now this at Newark airport is troubling," Payne said.

President Obama’s nominee for homeland security secretary, Jeh Johnson, who would oversee the TSA, is a Montclair resident and African-American.